Mirwais Jalil

BBC World Service

July 29, 1994, in an area near Kabul, Afghanistan

Jalil, a 25-year-old reporter for the Pashto- and Persian-language sections of the BBC World Service, was kidnapped and murdered while returning from an interview with renegade prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar at his base in Charasyab, south of Kabul. Five masked militiamen stopped Jalil's taxi and abducted him at gunpoint. The assailants released the taxi driver and an Italian journalist who was traveling with Jalil.

Jalil's body was discovered the following morning in Chelsitoon, on the outskirts of Kabul. He had been shot at least 20 times in the head and chest. Jalil had received threats during the year from several of Afghanistan's warring mujahedeen factions. He had aggressively covered the country's internecine civil war for the BBC, and his reports were widely recognized as authoritative in Afghanistan.